


it looks ugly, but it's clean

by divorceadvocate



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Other, Trauma, big emphasis on BLOOD its like the main theme of this, the character death is benzaiten and a minor character without a name, tread with caution tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:28:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23422432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/divorceadvocate/pseuds/divorceadvocate
Summary: Juno was trying to make Peter angry. Maybe if he made him angry, his nose would scrunch up in the way that it does when someone really annoys him and he can’t help but break character. Maybe he’d turn away and go back to his quarters in annoyance and leave Juno here, alone. But Peter didn’t say anything. He just held his wrists and turned them back and forth, this way and that, examining the damage done.“C’mon, Ransom, I don’t need a babysitter, I’m a big girl, I can lick my own wounds,” Juno snapped, pulling from Peter’s loose grip on him.“Juno,” Peter said, and Juno hated him for it. He hated how he said his name like it was something worth saying, how soft the word came out when it was his lips forming it. “Will you let me take care of you?”
Relationships: Benzaiten Steel & Juno Steel, Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 54
Kudos: 376





	it looks ugly, but it's clean

**Author's Note:**

> this fic has a lot to do with trauma, death, and blood so if youre uncomfy with any of those things, you might wanna skip this one!

Juno hated blood.

It seemed like a weird trait for someone like him to have. Former cop, former private eye, current thief. Blood was the common denominator in all of those professions, and he encountered it a lot. You’d think he’d be used to it by now, the scent of copper that would permeate the air, that would fill his lungs like a poisonous gas. He would choke on it every time and it took all of his willpower not to vomit at the sight. 

Over the years, he had learned to hide it pretty well. 

But some things are too much.

Like this. Like the body that laid in front of Juno now, a corpse that used to be an aristocrat, with a head that used to just be full of air. Now it was full of holes and blaster fire, and he couldn’t tear his gaze away from the person’s forehead, gaping and grisly, blood as black as midnight splattered down their front and dripping down the wall behind them, pooling around them on the Persian carpet they were sprawled upon. Their eyes were wide open and their mouth was halfway through a scream that never made it past their throat. 

_ “I thought he was you.” _

“Juno! Come on!” Juno turned to see Vespa, her eyes wild and her teeth bared. The hand that wasn’t gripping his shoulder was holding onto the blaster that had ended the aristocrat’s life right before his eyes. 

It had all happened so fast. Juno was supposed to be the smooth talking diplomat from Saturn, Vespa his silent but deadly right hand woman. It was supposed to be easy, come in and dazzle the aristocrat, wait until they were too drunk to remember anything, and then steal what they needed right from under their nose. 

But Juno had said something, something wrong, and they’d gotten angry, accusing him of being a thief and a liar. Which was true, granted, but exactly the wrong impression Juno was trying to sell. They were dangerously close to physically hurting him and Vespa, to blowing their whole cover. 

And Vespa... Vespa had reacted quickly, taking the hidden blaster from within Juno’s coat and shooting. 

God, there was so much blood. 

The pounding at the door of the aristocrat’s servants snapped Juno out of his thoughts, and he turned sharply towards Vespa, who had been shaking his shoulder desperately to try and get his attention.

“Juno, we need to go. Now.” 

Numbly, he nodded.

Their escape from the manor was a blur. A lot of yelling and dodging stray blaster fire, a moment of flaring pain that Juno suspected was him hitting his head on the car door of the Ruby 7 as Vespa had shoved him inside. He felt dizzy and sick, the same way he felt when he was a kid and he hadn’t eaten for a few days. The stench of the blood still hung heavy in the air even as they ran from the scene, and it certainly didn’t help Juno’s state of mind

When they made it back onto the Carte Blanche, the whole family crowded around to go over what had happened, what went wrong. 

“They were getting violent, I had to do something, or it would’ve been  _ our _ blood on those walls,” Vespa told everyone, arms crossed and knuckles white, staring determinedly down at the floor. 

“Well, I still think in the future we need to be more diplomatic,” Buddy said in that tone of voice that practically screamed, ‘I’m not mad, just disappointed.’

Juno’s ears felt like they were stuffed with cotton. He could still smell blood. How could he still smell blood? The stink of it was everywhere, and it seemed to only get stronger the more he tried to ignore it. 

He could see the rest of the crew talking, their mouths moving and heads nodding and hands gesturing, but he could hear nothing but the ringing in his ears. 

“I’m going to the bathroom,” he announced, far too loudly. Judging from the looks he was given, he’d probably interrupted someone in the middle of talking. He didn’t care. He needed to wash his hands. 

_ “Ben?! Ben, fuck, wake up- Sarah, what the hell did you do?!” Juno’s hands trembled as they pressed against the bullet wound that was square in the middle of his brother’s chest, trying to stop the flow of blood. It was futile. There was no flow of blood to stop because Ben had already been dead before Juno had arrived, before Sarah had called him. He was already dead when he had rejected Juno’s offer to move out with him. He was already dead when Sarah Steel gave birth to two twin brothers.  _

_ Blood coated Juno’s fingers, slick and growing tacky the longer it stayed there.  _

Juno shut the door behind him, leaning against it and praying that his exit wasn’t too horribly suspicious. He realized he was struggling to breathe. He was trying to take in shallow breaths so he could to avoid breathing in that _ fucking _ smell, and it was just making him more lightheaded, more dizzy.

Why was he in there again? His gaze landed upon the sink, and he remembered. He was going to wash his hands. Why was he washing his hands, again? He couldn’t remember why, but it seemed important. 

He stumbled from where he was leaning against the door to the sink and turned on the faucet, shoving his hands underneath the stream. The water was cold, an icy chill that made goosebumps rise on his arms, yet he made no effort to change the temperature. 

_ “Cold water.” _

_ Juno looked up at the police officer who was standing next to him. “What?” _

_ “Cold water. It’ll wash the blood right out of your clothes.” _

_ He tore his eyes away from the debacle in front of him, from Ben being zipped into a body bag and his mother being put in cuffs, to look down at his clothing. He was covered in Ben’s blood. His shirt was practically glued to his skin with it, and it soaked the front of his skirt where he’d dragged Ben’s body into his lap, sobbing. That seemed like so long ago, though it had happened no less than twenty minutes before. There were handprints on his tights from where he’d tried to wipe his hands off. The orange residue that still coated them was proof that his efforts had yielded no results.  _

_ “I’ll keep it in mind,” he mumbled.  _

Juno scrubbed at his hands under the water, the cold quickly numbing them. He scrubbed, and scrubbed, and scrubbed. Why wasn’t the smell of blood going away? It clung to the air, sickly sweet and bitter.  _ Why  _ wasn’t it going away? It should be going away. He scrubbed harder, digging his nails into his skin to peel away the grime, the stickiness, _ the smell _ . He couldn’t feel his hands. 

_ “Juno!” Benten called out, beaming at him. “You came to visit!” He was sitting on the hardwood floor of his dance studio, one leg straight out, leaning over it to stretch his calves in a way that had always made Juno wince. _

_ Juno smiled and strode over to him, throwing himself down onto the floor next to him entirely ungracefully with an unceremonious ‘thud’.  _ _   
  
_

_ “Yeah, I wanted to see how dumb you looked in legwarmers. How are the classes going?”  _

_ Ben shrugged, straightening out his other leg and stretching towards that one. “Can’t complain. I much prefer the higher level classes, though, those fucking five year olds are a nightmare.” _ _   
_ _   
_ _ Juno laughed, for what felt like the first time in a while. “God, I can only imagine.” _

_ Ben nodded solemnly. “Yeah, it’s rough. Luckily, I have lots of practice dealing with immature children. You see, I know this person named Juno-” _

_ “Hey! Shut up!” Juno had a huge grin across his face that greatly contrasted the punch he aimed at Ben’s arm. He gracefully dodged it with a laugh that Juno swore made the lights in the room glow a little brighter. _ _   
_ _   
_ _ “You know I’m right. But how’s the academy? You a big, scary cop yet?” _ _   
_ _   
_ _ Juno made a face like he’d been forced to take a bite out of a raw onion. “Eh. It’s... okay? The captains are a bunch of assholes and the people I’m training with aren’t much better. Sasha is there, which makes it a little more bearable, but. You know. She’s Sasha.” _ _   
_ _   
_ _ Ben stood up, walking over to the duffel bag that laid in the corner of the dance studio. He pulled a water bottle out of it, and took a sip as Juno talked.  _

_ “Yeah, sounds like you’re having the time of your life out there. Maybe you should give up on the police force, pursue a life of crime.” Juno snorted, falling back so that he was lying on the floor, his limbs spread about like a starfish. Lying down was nice, and his sore muscles from his rigorous training that day certainly thanked him for it.  _

_ “That’s the dream,” he mumbled. “Hey, how much time before your next class?” _

_ Ben sighed, looking at the clock on the wall. “Uh, just a few minutes. You’re welcome to stick around if you want to. Learn a few moves, impress your new cop friends.” _ _   
_ _   
_ _ “I’ll pass,” Juno snorted, but still didn’t get up from where he was on the floor, staring up at the ceiling instead. He was tired. Why was he so tired all of a sudden? _

_ “Juno.” _

_ “What?” Juno still stared at the ceiling. His chest felt heavy with a weight he couldn’t identify the origins of. It hurt. It hurt so much.  _

_ “Juno.” _

_ “I said ‘what’, spit it out.” Did they clean in here recently? What was that smell? It was like copper.  _

_ “Juno.” _

_ Juno finally looked up, and Ben was standing completely still, staring at Juno with wide, glassy eyes, limbs stiff like a mannequin. There was a hole in his shirt, and blood dripped out of it and onto the hardwood floors of the studio. There was so much blood. Ben smiled at him, and it seeped out from between his teeth and down his chin, coating his entire mouth a bright cherry red.  _

“Juno?”

Juno stood up straight in a panic, chest heaving, turning his head wildly. Where was Ben? He could still save him, if he found him, he could stop the bleeding, he could-

He didn’t find Ben. But he did find Peter. He stood in the half open doorway of the bathroom, and Juno was violently brought back to the present. Ben wasn’t here. Ben was in a cold grave on Mars, thousands of millions of lightyears away.

Concern was painted in every crevice of Peter’s face. He scanned Juno head to toe, like he was a mystery he was trying to crack. Juno’s skin crawled under the scrutiny. 

“What? I’m just washing my hands,” Juno said, hoping that Peter wouldn’t notice the way his voice cracked, how the words got caught in his too-tight throat. He pulled his hands out from under the freezing water to turn the faucet off. How come he could still smell blood? 

Peter gasped sharply. “Juno, your hands!” He looked down and saw that, with all of his scrubbing, he’d managed to rub his hands raw, to the point that he was bleeding from deep claw marks down his palms where he’d scratched at himself with his nails.

Oh. That’s how. 

Before he could stop him, before Juno could pull away and hide behind a brick wall of bravado and sarcasm, Peter reached forward. He took Juno’s wrist with a touch that was far too tender for Juno to have deserved it. 

“You’re bleeding,” he observed with a stunned mumble. 

“Wow, what an astute observation, are you sure I’m the detective here?” Juno hissed. He was trying to make Peter angry. Maybe if he made him angry, his nose would scrunch up in the way that it does when someone really annoys him and he can’t help but break character. Maybe he’d turn away and go back to his quarters in annoyance and leave Juno here, alone. But Peter didn’t say anything. He just held his wrists and turned them back and forth, this way and that, examining the damage done. 

“C’mon, Ransom, I don’t need a babysitter, I’m a big girl, I can lick my own wounds,” Juno snapped, pulling from Peter’s loose grip on him. 

“Juno,” Peter said, and Juno hated him for it. He hated how he said his name like it was something worth saying, how soft the word came out when it was his lips forming it. “Will you let me take care of you?”

His throat suddenly felt very tight, and he looked down at the red staining his hands. Peter was just trying to help, and here he was, pushing him away. Again. He had promised himself he’d be better, he had promised Peter he’d be better.

“It doesn’t hurt,” he tried, his voice barely there. Some part of his mind, the part of his mind that he had tried to leave in Hyperion City, still wanted to make Peter leave so that he could cower in here, alone, wallow in his trauma and pain. Drown himself in it.   
  
“That’s because you’ve been holding them under ice water for nearly twenty minutes,” Peter said. “Sit?” he asked, gesturing to the toilet. 

Juno did, suddenly way too tired to argue. Peter started rummaging through the cupboards in the cramped bathroom, an expression of worry set in hard lines on his face. Juno’s eye flitted down to his hands. The feeling was starting to come back to him, and _ fuck _ , it hurt. 

“Let me see,” Peter said. His voice was far more gentle, but he still held his shoulders stiffly, all of his tension there. Juno obeyed, and Peter took them gingerly. He took a bottle of something, some kind of disinfectant, and squeezed some onto a cotton ball before dabbing it along the trails of shredded skin. Juno winced at the feeling, and tried to hide it as best as he could. Peter then started smearing a jelly he’d found in a first aid kit over the wounds, taking care to not put too much pressure on the sensitive skin. “Leave this on for the rest of the night, reapply it in the morning. They should be mostly healed by tomorrow afternoon” he said, sitting on the ground next to Juno. He was done treating the injuries, but he still held Juno’s hands in his own, staring at the streaks of red that danced across his skin. 

“I’m sorry,” Juno whispered, and hated the way his whole body seemed to contract in on itself as he said those words. He didn’t want to cry. Again. Still. 

Peter looked up at him. “What happened, dear?” he asked, and the softness of his voice wasn’t exactly helping Juno’s ‘don’t cry’ plan.

Juno shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.” 

Peter gazed at him for a long minute. “It does matter,” he said. “But you don’t have to tell me now.” He pressed a kiss to Juno’s knuckle, his lips feather-light and barely there. “Let’s get you some water. Or some tea.”

“You know I hate tea,” Juno said, and he saw the corners of Peter’s mouth perk up into a watery half-smile.

“Oh, really? I guess I didn’t hear you the first thousand times you told me, unprompted,” he teased, pressing another kiss to another knuckle. “C’mon.” His voice was smooth and low, like the crackle of a warm fire after a long winter night. “You go lay down, I’ll meet you there, okay?”   
  
Juno nodded, standing on feet that felt impossible to move, connected to knees that rattled and threatened to give out from underneath him. Like a ghost, he floated down the hallway to Peter’s room, which, really, was just their joint room. He collapsed onto the sheets as soon as he got there, the mattress bouncing beneath him. He felt numb.Exhausted. Like he’d just been in the fight of his life, every muscle in his body screaming for rest.

Peter nudged the door open with his foot, holding a glass of water in one hand and a bowl of noodles in the other. He set the bowl down on the bedside table. “Jet made dinner, and I thought you’d like a bowl. I didn’t know if you were hungry or not, but I figured better safe than sorry. Here,” he said, holding the glass out to Juno. He sat up on his elbows, taking a tentative sip. It was slightly metallic, lukewarm, and he set down the glass next to the bowl. 

“In a bit,” he mumbled, laying back down on the bed. Peter nodded, sitting next to him, his feet still on the floor. Juno let his hands wander, brushing along Peter’s knee. 

“...Lay down with me?”   
  
“Of course.”

Peter shifted his weight until he was laying down next to Juno, and he immediately wrapped himself around his love. Juno buried his face into his chest, not caring about the buttons from Peter’s shirt digging into his skin, or the fact that he was still wearing his coat, or that Peter had laid onto his arm and that it would probably fall asleep in a few minutes. All that really mattered was that they were close, that he was holding Juno, and that he, for the first time that day, felt safe. Peter’s hand came to Juno’s hair and he started running his slender fingers through the soft curls there, and Juno let his eyes slip shut with a shudder at the sensation. 

“Are you ready to tell me what happened, darling?” Peter mumbled, lips pressed against Juno’s forehead. If he wasn’t so exhausted, he could have cried. 

Juno was quiet for a while. He was thinking. And Peter let him, drawing circles onto his lower back patiently while Juno formed the words. 

“When Ben died,” he said, hating the way his voice trembled but loving the way Peter held him tighter for it, “There was blood. A lot of it. It was- it was all over my hands and my clothes and on the floor and-” He took a shaky, steadying breath, clinging to Peter like he was drowning in his own mind and Peter was a buoy in the middle of the sea. “-and when Vespa shot the aristocrat, it... there was just as much blood.” He didn’t finish, he didn’t need to. Peter understood. Peter had been there too. He’d also once had the blood of someone he loved on his hands. He knew of the panic that set in when it wouldn't wash out of his clothes, the feeling of your entire world changing shape around you to adjust to the new hole torn into it. 

“I’m sorry,” he muttered into Juno’s hair, and the words were barely out of his mouth before Juno was objecting.

“No, don’t apologize, it’s not your fa-”

“But, we could’ve prevented it, we could have tried to ensure a peaceful escape, or at least kept you away from the bloodshed-”

“It’s done, Nureyev.” Juno sighed, burying himself further into the warmth of Peter, into that intoxicating scent that he still couldn’t really place. “It’s done.”   
  
Peter was stiff against him for a moment before he relaxed against Juno. “I suppose it is,” he said softly against Juno’s brow bone. He kissed a lazy trail from there down to his ear, across his cheek, the bridge of his nose. Despite himself, Juno’s nose scrunched up and his lips curled into a little smile.

“That tickles, asshole,” he grumbled, no venom in his voice despite the harsh words. Peter just laughed softly against his skin, and their hands found each in that moment, tangling together and squeezing. 

“You love it,” he said, kissing Juno’s eyelid with those silk lips that still felt amazing even after the millionth time of feeling them against him. “I’d love to see you eat something eventually though,” Peter added. “I’m sure your body needs it after what you just went through.”   
  
Juno nodded, tilting his head up to kiss him just for a moment, just briefly. “I will,” he whispered. “In a bit. For now, can we just-”   
  
“Of course,” Peter said, ever accommodating, ever kind. 

Juno pressed his ear to his chest and heard his heartbeat within, and listened to that rhythmic reminder that he was here, he was safe, and he was loved until he couldn’t smell the blood anymore, just the comforting notes of Peter’s cologne. 

**Author's Note:**

> give me ur comments or die by my hand


End file.
